Imagine having to worry everyday if you and your family were going to die from dehydration. Imagine having to drink from a contaminated river because you did not have access to safe drinking water. This is a reality for billions of people today.
For most of us, this would be pretty difficult to picture but that is because we live in a developed country with an abundance of available clean drinking water.
Developed nations such as the United States often take for granted the fact that we have clean accessible water at our fingertips. The thought of not being able to have safe water to drink has not ever occurred to most of us. If only every person in this world was this lucky.
Roughly 3.4 million people lose their lives from firsthand consumption of unsafe water or diseases infected by organisms living in polluted water.
Each year nearly 2.2 million die of diarrhea, 17,000 from intestinal worms, 1.1 million from malaria and 15,000 from fever. This is especially common in the developing nations because there is a large abundance of impoverished people that greatly rely on biodiversity.
Therefore, they endure the consequences more greatly than those in developed regions according to the article “Walking on the Tightrope” by Mingqian Li.
China is currently facing major water issues as well. 300 of China’s largest cities are considered to be short of water, according to the article “Asian Affairs: An American Review” by Todd Hofstedt.
This article also states that China has less than seven percent of the world’s freshwater yet it accounts for 20 percent of the world’s total population. This uneven equation creates the dilemma of not enough clean water for China.
Ironically, the world’s most impoverished people have to pay the most for clean water, while the world’s most affluent pay next to nothing for sanitary water.
According to a study done in 2006 conducted by the United Nations’ Human Development Report found that over one billion people are negated the right to sanitary water and 2.6 billion do not have the access to sufficient clean water. A controversial response to help aide the developing nations is the privatization of water.
This system does provide clean water to those in developing nations however it over charges and takes advantage of the vulnerable people that have the world’s absolute lowest income to begin with.
Water is a natural renewable resource that is vital to every human being’s life. No one should be denied this.
